


Hope, or Something

by WitchyBee



Category: Enderal (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Male-Female Friendship, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 11:45:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18141755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchyBee/pseuds/WitchyBee
Summary: An ending of sorts, and what comes after.A late night conversation.A sunrise.





	Hope, or Something

It is over.

Tharaêl kneels before Letho's corpse. Kalila, who has also lost her only friend in the world, knows that he deserves some time alone to say goodbye, but she just can’t quite bring herself to walk away from someone who very nearly took his own life moments ago.

“The Order owes me a few favors,” she says tentatively. “If you want, I could...see to it that he’s laid to rest properly.” She thinks of the Lost Ones in the orphanage.

Tharaêl sighs. “Thank you but that’s not how Rhalâim do things," he explains. His voice sounds detached, hollow, and he doesn't look at her. "According to the Rhalâs, death is a failure to achieve transcendence. The body is considered unworthy of any special treatment. It's nothing but an empty husk. Maybe more so, in this case.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

"Of course not. But he did.” Tharaêl finally stands and meets her gaze with tearful eyes. “Let’s just go, all right?”

“Yeah, okay,” Kalila replies, and hands him a teleportation scroll.

 

—

 

He gathers his meager possessions and moves into her home in the Nobles' Quarter. The first few weeks are touch and go. Tharaêl scarcely leaves his room let alone the house. He barely speaks, eats only just enough to survive, and doesn’t sleep at all as far as she can tell. When she asks if there is anything she can do, he insists he only needs some space.

Kalila understands grief. She has lived for decades with a complex tangle of guilt and sadness, like a weight on her chest. She knows it takes time to heal, if one ever truly does. Everyone has their own way of processing things. She can scarcely imagine how it must feel to learn that everything you thought you were fighting for was at best a failure, at worst a lie, and even your own body isn't real flesh and blood. But she also feels a bit helpless, too, watching him suffer and withdraw from the world. She wonders if Sirius felt the same about her back then.

As it turns out, her old familiar nightmare is something of a catalyst. Kalila dozes off one night in a chair by the fire, and awakens an hour later to the sight of her new roommate hovering over her with a sword.

“Creator’s balls! What in blazes are you doing, Tharaêl?”

“You were screaming, so I prepared for the worst,” he explains, irritatingly calm. He puts the sword away.

“I’m not possessed or anything. It was a bad dream, okay? Just a dream,” she says, perhaps more to put her own mind at ease. “Happens sometimes, especially when I fall asleep without taking my potion like an idiot.”

“Potion?”

“Yeah, to help me sleep peacefully. I lied to the Order’s apothecarii a bit. Said it was a side effect of the arcane fever. But anyway, I doubt I’ll be getting any more sleep tonight. We could talk. I mean, if you want to.”

“Talk about what?”

Kalila shrugs, feeling a little pathetic. Gods, selfish as it is, she just really doesn't want to be alone right now. Stoking the fire with a wave of her hand, she replies, “I don’t know. Anything. How are you holding up?”

Funny. Here they are living under the same roof, yet they have barely spoken since that awful day in the Room of Paintings, let alone discussed anything meaningful.

“Well, what do you expect me to say? That sometimes I still wish I’d died with Letho in that fucking temple? I do,” Tharaêl snaps, but the anger ebbs away as quickly as it had come. He turns his gaze toward the fire. He’s quite easy to read without the mask, she’s noticed. “Sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. You’ve already done so much for me. It just feels...strange.”

“What does?”

“All of this, I guess. I did so many terrible things. I dedicated my life to killing the Father until there was nothing left in me but that all-consuming wrath. It was all I had, you know? Now it’s gone. And, even though I don’t deserve to be, I’m still here.”

Kalila is very familiar with that lost feeling, with having to rebuild one’s life from scratch. She had felt that way in Ostian, orphaned and destitute, living more for Sirius’ sake than her own. She’d felt it keenly since washing up on the shores of Enderal, too, drifting aimlessly from place to place, from one job to the next. At least until this whole fight against the Cleansing gave her a purpose.

“I understand,” Kalila says, ignoring his incredulous expression. “Oh I know, I seem so well adjusted with my recurring nightmares.”

“What was your dream about?” he asks.

Kalila hesitates. “It’s a long, depressing story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Like you told me in the orphanage, talking can help.”

“Using my words against me, huh? All right. Wine first though, I think.”

A few minutes later they’re sitting in front of the warm glow of the hearth with a fine vintage all the way from Arktwend. Peaceweed might be better, but it isn't cheap and, while she could easily afford it these days, old habits die hard. The brandy she drinks now is much higher quality than the swill that kept her warm in Ostian, though. Regardless, Tharaêl is right. She should take her own advice. Actually confronting the feelings tied to those memories, however, is far from easy.

“I was born on a small farm outside the city of Ostian. My father was a delusional bastard who abused me and my mother. But it wasn’t always terrible; he’d take me hunting, even though I was a miserable shot. Sometimes he was the perfect loving father. And you know what? I think I hate him for that more than anything else. I fucking hate that my memories of him are still so vivid after all these years, yet I barely remember my little sister’s face or that Qyranian lullaby Mother used to sing.”

Kalila takes a deep breath, then a large sip of wine. She offers him the bottle.

“Thanks, but no. I shouldn’t.”

“Is that because you don’t want to, or because the Rhalâta wouldn’t approve? I’ll respect your choice either way. I'm just curious.”

“You always say what’s on your mind, I’ll give you that. Fine, why the fuck not.” Tharaêl takes the bottle. “You are a very bad influence.”

“Shh, don’t tell Arantheal. I'm a Keeper. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“You’re stalling, Prophetess.”

“Yeah, you got me,” Kalila admits. “Okay. So, I’m not sure how much you know about Nehrim, but in the south there is, or I guess was, this fanatical cult: the Creator’s Temple. One night a group of masked men from the Temple burned our farm and they...well, they killed my family. I still don’t understand why; my father was devout, terrifyingly so. In the dream, he blames me for what happened, but I suppose that’s just my own guilt talking. I don’t know.”

“How did you survive?” Tharaêl asks, seemingly unfazed by her story. After all, he knows the cruelty people are capable of inflicting better than most.

“I’d been riding since I was four, so I took one of our horses and fled. Made it all the way to Ostian. The horse wasn’t so lucky. I started begging, stealing, whatever I had to do not to starve. Honestly I don’t remember much of that time, except that I was so afraid the masked men would come for me.”

“Did they?”

“No. Ostian has a lot of abandoned buildings, so I never stayed in one place for too long just to be safe. I met my best friend in an abandoned house one winter. Sirius... He was... He put up with me for years which, as you can imagine, is quite a feat. We looked out for each other.”

“Hm. Sounds familiar,” Tharaêl says. “What happened to him?”

“He, um—” There’s a lump in her throat. Wine doesn’t help. Somehow this is so much harder than talking about her family. The pain of it is still too fresh and raw. She knows she could stop now, but Kalila wants to do this. She feels, in a way, that she owes it to herself, to Tharaêl, and to everyone she’s lost.

“The civil war had made it too dangerous to stay in Nehrim. Not to mention the lack of work, honest and otherwise,” she explains. “So, we stowed away on a ship. And we almost made it to Enderal. But then...well, we were discovered, and the captain killed him. Tried to killed me, too. So now I get to have nightmares about that, because somehow I survived. Yay.”

“It feels like a punishment,” he says, quietly.

“Yeah. The truth is, I don’t have any answers. I’m a mess. Not a day goes by I don’t wonder why the fuck I was spared. But there are good days, too, reasons to keep going. I have new friends, an apocalypse to prevent, and this truly fantastic bottle of wine. Sometimes that’s enough.”

“I guess it has to be.”

Kalila sighs. “Not much, I know, but it’s the best I've got. I still believe what I said, though, that everyone can find redemption and peace. We'll just have to figure out how together.”

 

—

 

The fire has long since died down to smoldering embers. Tharaêl is lying on the floor, half asleep. The wine bottle is empty. When did that happen? A bird chirps outside, drawing Kalila’s attention to the window where soft dawn light pours in.

“Shit, is it really sunrise already?”

“How would I know?”

“Oh come on, cave dweller,” she teases, “You could certainly use more of it, but I know you’ve seen the sun before.”

“Not this bloody early I haven’t.”

Kalila makes a decision. She gets to her feet, only a little unsteadily, and declares, “I have an idea.”

“No. Let me die.”

“Never. We are going to watch the sunrise. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Tharaêl opens his eyes. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

Which is how they end up on the roof of Dal'Geyss’ estate, watching the sun come up over the heartland. Best damn view in the city (besides the Sun Temple, of course.) It really is beautiful. Sirius would have liked it here. She’s come to love Ark, despite all the aristocrats and Keepers making it very clear that a Pathless foreigner doesn’t belong. She is going to do her best to ensure this stupid world gets a lot more sunrises. Purely out of spite, if nothing else.

“You were right, you know.”

"Mm?"

“Right now this is enough,” Tharaêl says, sounding content.

Kalila, exhausted physically and mentally, rests her head on his shoulder. They remain there until Prince Mith decides to shatter the peaceful morning stillness with his self-proclaimed genius poems, causing both of them to briefly contemplate murder.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before I heard Tharaêl's post-questline dialogue, so my version of things is actually a bit less optimistic than canon suggests. Heh. They'll be okay, I swear. I hope you enjoyed it. Not sure why, but this brief little tale took forever.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment if you're so inclined.


End file.
